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April 8, 2020

Together N.H. offers lifeline to city businesses

PHOTO | New Haven BIZ The New Haven Green.
By Michael C. Bingham

A new “economic resiliency” initiative for city businesses, Together New Haven, launched late last month — and some are already getting help because of it.

The program, initiated by the city’s Economic Development Administration and supported by a network of partners, is intended to help owners of New Haven businesses — including restaurants, professional services and creative enterprises, weather the COVID-19 crisis that has shut down many businesses and confined both their employees and their customers to their homes indefinitely.

City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli provided an update on Together New Haven’s initial efforts to the city Development Commission at its monthly meeting Wednesday morning.

The effort’s principal objectives, he said, were to support and promote local companies for the duration of the pandemic, to offer technical assistance for businesses that must find new ways to engage customers at a distance, and to stay connected with one another “as a region and as a community,” Piscitelli said.

The Together New Haven campaign has also made available well intended (if modest) direct assistance to local enterprises reeling from the economic shutdown. One of these is a “creative sector relief fund” for freelancers, artists, musicians and other workers in the “gig economy” who have seen work dry up since early March. The fund awards grants of $1,000 for lost gigs and/or skills building.

In the first days of the fund Piscitelli said 146 grants had been awarded, with 67 more still available. An additional 89 applications had been received and were under review. “That gives you an idea of both the need and the engagement associated with the relief fund,” he said.

Another form of direct assistance is a new digital marketplace created in collaboration with the city’s Town Green Special Services District, the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, the Regional Economic Xcellerator and other partners. This allows both downtown and neighborhood businesses that might not have an existing digital presence access to a citywide virtual marketplace to promote themselves to a broader network to market offerings such as gift cards and special online offers.

“Any one of those businesses might have 1,000 or 2,000 people in the Facebook networks — that’s typical for a small bricks-and-mortar business,” Piscitelli said. “With the combined network we can expand the reach for all businesses to almost 100,000 through direct contacts.”

“The key to the program,” he added, “is to encourage people to buy.”

There’s also a “community marketplace,” a common portal where retailers can put merchandise on sale.

The objective, Piscitelli said, is to help New Haven businesses of every stripe to make it to the finish line of the emergency — or at least until the beginning of what he called the “bounceback.”

“The bounceback will be very uneven,” Piscitelli predicted. “It might not be fully felt until the middle of the year.

“There’s no light switch,” he added.

More information about the program is available at togethernewhaven.com.

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